Katie Couric goes soft on guests on first talk show

Published 5:37 pm, Tuesday, September 11, 2012

This image released by ABC shows host Katie Couric making her debut appearance for her syndicated talk show "Katie," Monday, Sept. 10, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Ida Mae Astute)

This image released by ABC shows host Katie Couric making her debut appearance for her syndicated talk show "Katie," Monday, Sept. 10, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Ida Mae Astute)

Photo: Ida Mae Astute

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This image released by Disney-ABC Domestic Television shows host Katie Couric, center, with celebrity guests Sheryl Crow, left, and Jessica Simpson on the premiere episode of her new syndicated talk show "Katie," Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Ida Mae Astute) less

This image released by Disney-ABC Domestic Television shows host Katie Couric, center, with celebrity guests Sheryl Crow, left, and Jessica Simpson on the premiere episode of her new syndicated talk show ... more

Photo: Ida Mae Astute

Katie Couric goes soft on guests on first talk show

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You would be forgiven for mistakenly thinking you'd tuned into an infomercial for Weight Watchers in the first half-hour of Katie Couric's new syndicated talk show, "Katie," which premiered Monday.

It probably made strategic sense, up to a point, to have singer-designer-tabloid princess Jessica Simpson as Couric's first guest, but 30 minutes of softball questions and unrelenting promotion for Weight Watchers got old quickly.

There's been a lot of talk about who will be the "next Oprah," but the truth is, there probably can't be a new Oprah because this isn't 25 years ago. Daytime TV is full to bursting with talk shows, and two others joined the gab fest on Monday: "The Jeff Probst Show" and "The Ricki Lake Show." Steve Harvey got in on the talk with his new show last week.

Oprah Winfrey could be, and in many ways was, all things to many, if not all, viewers. A talk-show host today not only can't do that but also knows better than to try. That's why Probst's debut show gushed with positive thinking, while Lake focused on women of a certain age making new starts in life. Not to everyone's taste, but each host is aiming to carve out a slice of the daytime talk show audience.

In preliminary ratings, Monday's premiere of "Katie" was comfortably ahead of the freshman pack, outdrawing Harvey by 87 percent, Probst by 150 percent and Lake by a whopping 250 percent. The show also earned the highest daytime premiere ratings since "Dr. Phil" launched in 2002.

Still, if Winfrey had been planning her first afternoon show, as Couric has been doing for several months, it seems likely that she would have gone for a huge name - someone like Barbra Streisand or Jennifer Lopez, both of whom are on Couric's schedule later - or someone with an especially uplifting personal story, like Amy Copeland, Tuesday's guest, who lost her limbs to a flesh-eating bacteria.

Instead, Couric went for a mid-wattage celeb who has been struggling since the birth of her daughter in May to drop a good deal of baby weight. All well and good, up to a point, and that point was when the relatively pleasant but not especially revealing interview morphed into an infomercial with a clip from Simpson's new commercial for Weight Watchers. And just when we thought the shilling was over, Couric told her TV audience how they could join Simpson's weight-loss journey and receive two free weeks of Weight Watchers membership.

Yowza, yowza.

No one would fault Couric for not asking more probing questions of someone like Simpson: Nothing against the singer, but it's not quite like asking Sarah Palin what newspapers she reads every day.

But there was a sense that Couric did pull a punch with her next guest, singer Sheryl Crow, who wrote the "Katie" theme song, "This Day."

First, the women talked about the discovery that Crow has a benign brain tumor. Couric then asked Crow about former boyfriend Lance Armstrong, who, last month ended his battle against charges that he'd used steroids. While the women talking admiringly of Armstrong's foundation, which has raised $470 million to fight cancer, audience members waiting for Couric to ask Crow if she believed Armstrong used steroids were left disappointed. The question remained unasked.

Sure, it's a daytime talk show, and Couric wasn't grilling a woman who might become the next vice president of the U.S., but she's still a journalist, which is why it seemed odd not to ask the question.

In the end, though, survival in the daytime talk-show game depends on other assets: Likability, infectious energy, warmth. And Couric has those.